Breakthrough on valuing mental health

The UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) has published a breakthrough report. It reveals for the first time that the detrimental impact of mental ill-health on our quality of life is ten times worse than the impact of any other health condition.

The report, Valuing Mental Health: how a subjective wellbeing approach can show just how much it matters, is authored by Daniel Fujiwara and Paul Dolan from the London School of Economics. In it, they strongly recommend that the current cost benefit analysis of assessing health care costs (by Quality of Life Years) used by bodies such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) should now be replaced by a more accurate method (known as the Subjective Wellbeing approach).

In its own response document, Beyond disparity, UKCP is calling on government and public agencies to drive forward policy changes to improve the lives of people and communities blighted by poor mental health.